Destiny's Tide

by Destiny's Tide (retail) (epub)

  ‘My grandfather, sir.’

  Gonson smiled, as though sharing a private joke with himself.

  ‘That I have lived so long,’ he mumbled, ‘that I now appoint the grandsons of men I once knew.’

  Gonson shook his head, lowered his eyes, and fell silent. Drury looked sideways at him. The tall young man moved forward again, but before he could act, Gonson looked up.

  ‘Dunwich has undoubted and incontrovertible precedence,’ he said, his voice suddenly stronger, and very nearly that of a man twenty years younger, ‘as is proven by letters and charters of the ninth year of King Henry the Fourth, the ninth year of King Henry the Fifth, the second year of King Henry the Sixth, the sixth year of King Edward the Fourth, and many other preceding monarchs of this realm. That precedence cannot, and will not, be overridden, in this case at any rate. Thus, by the powers vested in me by the king’s most excellent highness, and by the Lord High Admiral of England, I declare John Stannard to be admiral and commander of the ships set out from the havens of the Blyth and Dunwich rivers for the war in Scotland.’

  Jack cast a sideways glance at Raker, whose mouth was set in a grim rictus, his cheeks rapidly reddening. Then he turned back to formally thank the old man, and saw the tall youngster at Gonson’s back wink at him.

  * * *

  Later, in a corner of the low principal room of the Crown Inn, across the way from Framlingham’s huge church, Jack and Gonson’s attendant raised pewter tankards of ale to each other.

  ‘Might Gonson have decided the other way?’ Jack Stannard asked.

  William Halliday smiled.

  ‘Unlikely, Jack, even if I hadn’t k-k-kept emphasising your m-many and undoubted m-m-merits, and laying before him copies of every charter your t-t-town has ever obtained. However he may appear, Gonson still has a sharp m-mind, and he knows the law of both sea and land better than any man I’ve ever m-m-met.’ Halliday took a sip of his ale; Jack knew from long experience that after a pot or two more of it, his friend’s stutter would vanish entirely. ‘Besides, he knew His Grace of Suffolk’s opinion in the m-m-matter, and as he said, he knew of your grandfather, too, thanks be to God. Hard to believe, be it not, that the old man was a bold fighting c-c-captain all those years ago, in the k-k-k-k-king’s first war, let alone a gentleman usher to great Harry himself. But he were both, once. And now, my friend, the success of the k-k-k-king’s wars rests heavily upon that old man’s shoulders. God grant him the strength to bear the responsibility.’

  Jack and Will Halliday had first met at school, and whenever a Stannard ship went into Ipswich, which was often, Jack made a point of seeking out his old friend. Will was still very much a grown version of the boy he had once been, his face much younger than his years and his habitual expression still inclined to child-like eagerness. This impression was reinforced by the stutter that had caused him to be bullied mercilessly at school, and that he had never shaken off in adulthood. Jack, though, who first met Will when coming to his aid against a gaggle of the more relentless bullies, was already threatening to look old long before his time. In the fullness of years, when Will sought a clerkship under the newly-minted vice-admiral of the coast, Jack Stannard used his family’s influence, such as it was, to help procure it. Now Will, who had swiftly risen in Gonson’s estimation, had repaid the debt, but Jack was profoundly aware that having a friend so close to the effective organiser of the Navy Royal was a connection well worth maintaining, even if Alice did not emphasise the point every time Will’s name came up in conversation. Indeed, Jack had already told his old schoolmate that, if he ever needed to call on Stannard influence again – or, if it came to it, Stannard money – then he had only to write.

  Jack cradled his tankard in his hands, thinking hard upon Will’s words about Gonson.

  ‘Such a burden for one man,’ said Jack, ‘and such an old man, at that.’

  Will nodded.

  ‘It overwhelms him at times, and now the k-k-k-king has decided upon such an ungain as two wars at once… It were too much for one m-man before, but now, Jack, he sits hunched over his desk, sometimes even until dawn or beyond. He tried to retire, y’know, back in C-C-C-Cromwell’s time, but that arch-devil threw him the bone of the vice-admiralty of Norfolk and Suffolk. Gives him a large share of the p-proceeds of all wrecks on the shores of the two counties, it does. And you’ll know better than I how many of those there are on this coast.’ Will Halliday raised his tankard. ‘But Master Gonson should sleep well in his bed tonight, knowing he’s appointed the best admiral for the ships from the Blyth. As well as he ever sleeps, at any rate, since…’ Will’s voice trailed off, an unspoken secret left hanging in the air. Then Will brightened, and raised his drink. ‘So here’s to you, my friend.’

  Jack nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘I doubt if Martin Raker is toasting me tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Raker! I don’t think you n-need worry about Raker, Jack. If I were you, my friend, I’d worry about the Scots instead.’

  But when he returned to Dunwich from Framlingham, relieved and proud to have been confirmed in his command, John Stannard found that he had an even more pressing worry to concern him: the sudden illness of his sweet, beloved wife.

  TWO

  High upon Dunwich cliff, in the corner of All Saints churchyard, Overfield moved on to the final committal of Alice Stannard, the words in English now.

  ‘We commend to Almighty God our sister Alice. We commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…’

  Alice Stannard’s body went into the soil of Dunwich Cliff. It should have been a solemn, silent moment, but the priest’s final benediction and Jack’s conflicted thoughts were interrupted by the sudden sound of distant hammering. Men were at work on the sea wall down by the Old Quay, repairing the last spring tide’s breach.

  Hammering was ever a part of Dunwich’s music. That’s what Alice always said, and she was right, as she was about so much else.

  Jack felt a tug on his left hand, and looked down at his son, a healthy six-year-old already sporting a fine mop of characteristically untameable brown Stannard hair. The lad was newly breeched, and infinitely proud of it.

  ‘Father, do we sail for the war now?’

  ‘I sail for the war, son. Remember what your mother, there, always told you, Thomas Stannard. Eat, grow, learn to sail, learn to hold a sword, then you’ll be ready for a war. Not this one, but the next one, or the one after that. There’ll always be wars, Tom, so there’s no need at all to be rushing for this one.’

  ‘But I can hold a sword now, Father.’

  ‘A dirk, Tom.’ Jack kneeled down, and took both his son’s hands. ‘You can hold a dirk, which is a good weapon, it’s true, but you’ve got a few years yet before you’ll be able to wield a sword. No, son, I sail for this war, but your turn will come, my lad. As the sun rises and sets, your turn will come. But if I’m to catch the tide, you need to go to your aunt now, Thomas Stannard. God be with you, my son.’

  The boy looked up at him uncertainly, the eyes wide and nearly welling, the mouth trying to form a protest, or else a scream of pain for his lost mother. But, in the end, the child knew his duty. No matter how young, a Stannard of Dunwich always knew his duty. Two glances across to Jack’s sister Agatha, already holding the hand of Tom’s own sister, Meg, tall and impossibly determined in only her ninth year. One long stare back at his father. Then he was gone, walking reluctantly but purposefully across the greensward to take his aunt’s other hand, while his sister stared at him disdainfully. It was the same way Agatha had often looked at the younger Jack, and was doing so again, now. To her, the war was a far distant affair that could be fought by other men, whereas, as she had told him often in the days since Alice’s death, Tom and Meg had but one father, and what if he were to perish on the end of a Scotsman’s blade? Women, Jack told her, did not understand such things; but Alice, God rest her soul, had understood them well enough.

  Jack looked away from his siste
r’s critical gaze, which, these days, seemed to be the fixed expression upon her smallpox-ravaged face, especially when in the company of her brother. He stood up, crossed himself, whispered a prayer for his wife, crossed himself again, offered up a prayer to Maria maris stella to watch over him on this voyage, and crossed himself a final time. He took a final look down at Alice’s corpse, so small, so still, barely hearing the platitudes Overfield was murmuring to him. He wished, once again, that she had been laid to rest in their own parish of Saint John’s, not here in the alien soil of All Saints, the poorest parish in Dunwich, and that she had been laid in a coffin, which the Stannards could easily afford. But even in her final agony, Alice’s good sense triumphed over all.

  ‘No point laying me in John’s churchyard, Jack Stannard,’ she said between gasps of pain, ‘only for the fish to be feasting on me within a year. And no point laying me in a coffin, either, wasting good wood you could use to repair the Blessing. No, Jack, lay me in All Saints, like my mother before me, in a winding-sheet. Then the first thing I’ll see when I rise on the Day of Judgement is dawn coming up over the cliff. There’s nothing on this earth like a Dunwich dawn, Jack. Remember it well. Remember me with every dawn, my love.’

  Jack Stannard paid Overfield his groat for conducting the series of funeral rites, the Placebo on the previous evening, then the Dirige, then the Requiem, then the interment, all exactly as Alice had specified. Alms for the poor had also been distributed according to her wishes, and no fewer than fifteen shillings spent on a drinking at the Pelican in its Piety, to which it seemed the entire town was invited. But if he was to catch the tide, Stannard had no time left him to attend. Instead, he turned away at last from the grave, toward the vast, empty bulk of Greyfriars, which nearly abutted the west wall of All Saints churchyard, making for the road down to the harbour. He pulled back his hood and cursed the hint of sea spray afflicting his own eyes, although he knew full well that All Saints was too high on the cliff for the spray to reach it, and the day’s sea too gentle in any case.

  That was when he saw the old man in the corner of the churchyard, leaning upon the wall, staring intently at him. For an ancient well past his fiftieth year, the fellow still had the strong, wiry frame he had possessed for as long as Jack had known him, albeit now slightly stooped. His face was the colour and texture of aged leather, his grey hair cropped very close to his skull, his clothes of broadcloth rather better than they should have been.

  Jack walked over to him, and the men exchanged the slightest of bows.

  ‘Master Thomas,’ said Jack.

  Despite the vast gap in age, they had been friends for ten years, but Jack still adhered stubbornly to the title he had always accorded to Thomas Ryman.

  ‘Master John Stannard. I hear you sail for Scotland.’

  ‘Your hearing’s improved, if you heard that from Kenninghall.’

  Ryman nodded.

  ‘Kenninghall hears everything before Dunwich. Christ’s wounds, Dunwich men are the last to know what occurs in Orford or Aldeburgh, let alone in the king’s wars. Ever thus, ever will be, world without end.’

  The old man’s voice was an oddity: purest Suffolk, yet overlain with traces of stranger accents, and faraway tongues.

  ‘You’re a Dunwich man, Master Ryman.’

  ‘True enough, Master Stannard. Ah, true enough. No matter how I try, I can’t ever remove that stain on my name.’

  Thomas Ryman maintained his fixed, serious stare for a moment longer, then broke into a broad grin, strode forward, and embraced John Stannard. The younger man held him close.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Jack.’

  ‘And I you, old man.’

  Thomas Ryman nodded toward the grave, where Agatha and the young Stannard siblings still stood, all three now weeping copiously.

  ‘My condolences. She was a good woman, your Alice, taken too soon. I’ve paid the duke’s chaplain to say a mass of Scala Coeli to speed her soul from Purgatory.’

  They broke apart, and Jack nodded. He had a reply half formed, but the sea spray was still stinging too harshly. Jack turned his head, and noticed the sack that Thomas had laid down by the wall. A sword hilt protruded from it.

  Thomas looked in the same direction, and smiled.

  ‘I thought you might have use of me on this voyage,’ he said.

  ‘The duke’s given you leave?’

  ‘The duke… ah well, His Grace of Norfolk has more urgent concerns at the moment,’ said Thomas. ‘Notably, invading France. But if any at Kenninghall notice my absence, I doubt they’ll make much of it. And my charge would be the last child on earth to tell his grandfather that his teacher has forsaken him. Or his father and mother, come to that, if they cared a jot, or ever asked him a few proper questions. But to do that, Jack, they’d have to cease warring with each other. Maybe live under the same roof every once in a while.’ The ancient shook his head. ‘The young Lord Howard is a born conspirator, adept at lying to his grandfather, his parents, his other tutors, the stableboys, the world. Alas, though, Jack, in every other respect, he’s but a very poor pupil. Not like some of the others I’ve taught in the past.’

  Despite the pain in his heart, Jack grinned.

  ‘When I was your pupil, Thomas Ryman, you told me many times that you’d had your fill of wars.’

  Thomas nodded. His face was lined with age, but two of the longer lines on his right cheek were deep, long-healed scars, souvenirs of battles past.

  ‘Ah, but I was still a friar then, Jack Stannard. It’s the sort of thing friars who were once soldiers are meant to say, when they’re asked whether they prefer the contemplation of God’s grace to the bloody slaughter of their fellow men. But then, of course, the king, whom God preserve, closed the friary, there.’

  They both glanced to the west, toward the great, grey, empty buildings behind the high wall that nearly abutted All Saints churchyard. Thomas Ryman had not been within the precinct in all the years since the day when the royal commissioner came and abruptly ended its existence. Jack observed only that more tiles had gone from the roofs of the chapter house and infirmary during the last storm, but Ryman was thinking of his old brothers in Christ: of poor Anselm, dead in poverty and squalor barely weeks after Greyfriars went down, and young Martin, gone north to join those who called themselves the Pilgrims of Grace, and, in consequence, summarily hanged from a tree as a rebel and traitor.

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Ryman, turning away from the sight of the empty monastery, ‘’twas a song whose last note was sung long ago. And so, Jack, if the best the world can offer old Tom Ryman in this new dispensation is teaching the lumpen little dolt who’ll one day be Duke of Norfolk how to hold a sword he’ll never have to wield in anger – well, then, I’ll take a return to the wars any time and say my Ave Marias if I get back.’

  Jack knew well that at least part of this was bravado, the speech that a former teacher would make to a former pupil. But he knew enough of Thomas Ryman’s past life to sense that there was more than a grain of truth in it, too. ‘Besides, John Stannard, you’ve never fought the Scots. I have, remember? Flodden Field, where we slaughtered their king and ten thousand of their men. Several of whom were killed by the sword in the bag, there. And I was on campaign with the duke in that sodden realm no more than eighteen months past. Surely that alone earns me a free passage northward?’

  Jack smiled.

  ‘Perhaps it does, old man. Yes, I think it does.’

  * * *

  The Dain Quay was empty but for old Wychingham’s ship, the John Evangelist, newly returned from Newcastle with coals for the Cuddons’ account, and the longboat that was to take John Stannard and Ryman out to their vessel, far down river, beyond Cuckolds Point.

  Like her consorts in the Horse Reach, the Blessing of Dunwich rode high in the water: she would only receive her warlike cargo at her first port-of-call. Of a hundred tons, and four-masted, she was large for the town – indeed, one of the largest ships that still regularly made their way up
to Dunwich’s quays – and larger than the other three ships at anchor around her, all of them three-masters. The Grace of Southwold, Raker’s ship, was the next largest at eighty tons, while the Virgin of Ipswich, under Maddox of Walberswick, was no more than sixty, as was Dunwich’s second ship, the Peter, Christopher Eagle’s vessel. All of them had been taken up for the king’s royal service, and were being paid tonnage money, wages, and expenses, all upon generous terms, to go to the Scottish war.

  Fore- and sterncastles stood proud from the hull of the Blessing, the only one of the four ships equipped with them. These were new features, intended to make her seem more like a true man-of-war, and had been fitted over the winter by the thin, grey old man who awaited Jack and Thomas Ryman as they stepped up onto the waist of the ship.

  ‘Master Stannard,’ said Jed Nolloth, with apparent deference. ‘And Master Ryman, as I recall. Welcome aboard the Blessing.’

  There was no reprimand for very nearly missing the tide, and no words of condolence either. But there did not need to be, for each knew what was in the other’s mind. Jack had known Nolloth almost all his life, from the first time his childish steps ran along the quay to greet his father as he returned from a voyage. Nolloth’s vast nose and high forehead had fascinated the young Jack, and he often sat on the knee of the stoop-shouldered shipwright, trying to learn the mysteries of his impenetrable art. Nolloth soon had the boy cutting and carrying timber, hammering planking into place, caulking, and God knew what else; and when the young John stood upon his dignity and complained that this was no business for a merchant’s son, his father leathered him. For all his black moods, distempers, and all the rest, Peter Stannard knew what his son came, in time, to learn too. All the long hours spent in the shipyard and then in taking Stannard ships to sea, so very different to the course he thought he was set upon, gave the boy a fair grasp of the nature of ships, made him healthy and strong, and above all, earned him the respect of the men of Dunwich, even if not that of his own father.